Unless we are making simulations or videos that depend on action and voiceover to get the point across, technical communicators communicate in text and in illustrations with text associated with them. These are words on a page or on a screen. It seems simple, yet we have so many choices to make. We are not limited to single-spaced or double-spaced text typed in rows. We are not limited to one wide column or two narrow columns. We are not limited to black and white. We are not limited to books. We are not limited to paper.

Wherever you work, whether its in a calmly organized editorial group, alone facing down deadlines in a home office, or running from project to project like a blue-assed fly, you would like to know how you stack up, how you are doing.

But you dont have time to stop and look around. You have deliverables. You need to have things move along so that you get things done. The result of getting things done, of course, is product. And product can be measured. [Read more →]

Thanks to the organizers, to our corporate sponsor, and to everyone who participated.

Special thanks to those who gave me advice as I prepared the tool: the brainy shakytweets, the incomparable dfarb, the scintillating finiteattention, and the endlessly knowledgeable ellispratt. If I have forgotten you, I have not forgotten you. You know who you are.

On Friday 14 January 2011, a group of SENSE editors got together in one of the Park Plaza Hotel meeting rooms in Utrecht, something we rarely get to do because of our work schedules and because, as John Edmund Hynd said, You would have to go a long way to find another workshop anything like this. We were editing Dutch-authored English with Dr Joy Burrough-Boenisch. [Read more →]

Another Competition Done and Dusted

The 2004 edition of the Trans-European Technical Communications Competition completed smoothly once again last December under the capable guidance of this years Competition Manager, Jennifer O Neill. The results were collated, the entrants advised. All that remained was the awards supper held in a European city as an opportunity to meet in a social setting, reward ourselves for work well done, and distribute awards. [Read more →]